Gli Stati Uniti inviano missili aria-aria AIM-9X all’avanguardia per i nuovi caccia F-16 dell’Ucraina

Is good, but AIM-9X is a short/medium range missile and hence unlikely a factor in air superiority because Russian jets are lobbing bombs and missiles from stand off distances far outside its maximum range (not achievable in low level flight by a huge margin) and well within the Russian air defense envelope.

So the F-16s do not want to be in any possible situation where they would be able to use an AIM-9X because that would be really bad!

edit: they may be good against cruise missiles and that is a good training for the Ukrainian pilots though having jets run down cruise missiles is not precisely the most cost effective usage either.

Cheaper than patriots to knock down cruise missles

Strap a SM-6 under a Ukrainian F-16 and we’re talking. AIM-9X is just a standard missile.

An amusing historical anecdote is the Soviets got their hands on one of the first sidewinders when a Taiwanese F-86 Saber hit a PRC Mig-17 with one that failed to detonate and they were able to reverse engineer it into the Vympel K-13 (AA-2 Ato)l).

The Taiwanese also got the first Sidewinder kills.

Wish we had built the block iii with longer range. Maybe the Army will fund that.

Also, we should just send a few IFPC inc 2 launchers (ground box launchers and radard) with AIM-9X to Ukraine instead of Redstone for testing. Sure, you still need to do formal validation but you’ll find out quick if there’s something wrong with it.

Stop with these titles. It’s not anywhere near US top notch stuff but it will be very good for the defense. But it’s by no means something cutting edge.